What Does Deuteronomy 7:22 Mean?
The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you little by little. You cannot finish them at once, lest the beasts of the field multiply against you.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the LORD thy God will put out those nations before thee by little and little: thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee.THE KEY
The pace of removal is part of protection: clearing the nations all at once would let another danger multiply into the opening.
THE MEANING
The LORD your God drives the nations before you little by little; their immediate, complete removal would expose you to beasts of the field multiplying against you. The verse keeps the displacement and the danger it leaves behind in view together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the assumption that completing the removal at once is necessarily safer: an emptied land would let another danger multiply.
THE ROOT
תִּרְבֶּה
tirbeh
GROWS FROM
רבה
ravah
To become many, grow numerous, or increase.
“multiply against you” in this verse is tirbeh. The word names the beasts becoming many. The same root describes living creatures multiplying in Genesis, so the danger here lies in what expands into the space left by the removal.
ALSO GROWS
ravah: To become many; to increase.
רָבָה
This form describes the number growing, the same action named in the warning about the beasts.
hirbah: To make many; to multiply.
הִרְבָּה
This causative form makes the increase explicit, as in the multiplying of creatures in Genesis 1:22.
כַּלֹּתָם
kallotam
GROWS FROM
כלה
kalah
To be complete or finished; to bring something to completion.
“finish them” in this verse is kallotam. The Hebrew word behind “consume” grows from the idea of completing or finishing. The verse says that finishing the removal all at once would leave the land exposed to another danger.
ALSO GROWS
kalah: To be complete or finished; to come to an end.
כָּלָה
This form carries the sense of reaching completion that underlies the verse’s warning against doing it all at once.
killah: To complete, finish, or bring to an end.
כִּלָּה
This form describes actively bringing something to its end, illuminating the force of “consume them” in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Measured stages preserve the conditions needed for what comes next.
I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land be emptied, and the beasts of the field multiply against you. By small measures I will drive them out from before you, until you are fruitful and take hold of the land.The soil bears fruit by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.Be slow to heat therefore, brethren, until the arrival of the LORD. Look, the one who works the soil waits for the costly fruit of the earth, and is slow to heat over it until he takes in the early and late rain.THE THREAD
And God blessed them, saying, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply upon the earth."The verb translated “multiply” carries the same root as the beasts’ “increase” in Deuteronomy. Here it names creaturely multiplication as a blessing; there, it names a danger as wild beasts multiply into the land being cleared.
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